Madoka Mayuzumi[Poems of 17syllables]Title



[Japanease]

Season's gift giving and receiving, the warmth of winter.

There is an end-of-the-year gift giving custom called "oseibo" in Japan.

This is how we express our appreciation for the past year and wish our acquaintances the best for the coming year.
It is a pleasant time to think of what gift to give this year and what message to write to those friends or acquaintances who live far away.

When we open our gifts, how delighted we are to visualize the senders' happy faces and their sincerity. Sometimes we find handwritten messages about how they are getting along.
Then we call each of them to thank them for the gift, which renews our warm communications with each other.

Perhaps this is one of the wise traditions in Japan to renew and to continue people's relationships.
Warm communication is done this way between people during the cold winter season.

[season words] warmth of winter
[season] winter

The first snow, pure white without hesitation.

When the first snow of the season falls, the whiteness of the snow makes you think there is nothing more pure than the white of snow.
There is a dazzling brightness that makes you hesitate to step into it.

White however is the easiest color to soil, and the first snow is also short-lived and melts so quickly.
Yet snow exposes itself just as it is,lying on the ground. The snow does not hesitate to get soiled or to melt quickly, and in this we find its purity.
This purity makes the white of the first snow reflect more beautifully in our eyes.

[season words] first snow
[season] winter

Snow falling, there is that bench on which we once sat.

I wonder how long it has been since I stopped seeing him?

One day I happened to walk through a place where I found a bench that brought back many memories. This is the bench where we sat when we were in love.
It brought back the memories of him all at once; the conversations we exchanged, the promises we could not keep, the lovers quarrels and how we made up again.

It is snowing on that bench where no one is sitting. It is snowing as if it is trying to bury our love and my memories.

When spring comes, many people will again sit on this bench, and like we two lovers, they will sit and whisper their love. I wonder how many loves and how many break-ups this bench has seen.

[season word] snow
[season] winter

To be with you, I become a snow woman.

It may be a lover who live far apart, or he may be working at a distant location, or he may be somebody impossible for her. When a woman lives away from someone she loves, it may be natural for her to want to go see him even if she turns into a snow woman.

The snow woman is only an imaginary person in stories. It is said that she is so passionate that she kills the man attracted to her. A woman who cannot stop her longing or attachment to him heads for the place he lives.

How she wishes him to be hers even if she dare take his life! How she wishes to be always with him! The distance that prevents her from seeing him sets fire to the woman's heart.

[season word] snow woman
[season] winter

translated by Mineko Azuma


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